Libyan rebels said on Tuesday they are ready for the final battle of their more than six-month uprising after their leaders gave Moammar Gadhafi's last loyalists a deadline of Saturday – the day after the end of a Muslim holiday feast – to surrender.
Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of the rebel National Transitional Council, said the respite was offered to mark the three-day Eid al-Fitr feast that starts Wednesday in Libya and follows the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
“We have a good idea where [Colonel Gadhafi] is,” a top rebel leader said as fighters converged upon Sirte, 400 kilometres east of the capital.
The rebels, tightening their grip on Libya after a military blitz, also demanded that Algeria return Col. Gadhafi’s wife and three of his children, who fled there Monday.
Granting asylum to his family, including daughter Aisha, who gave birth to her fourth child in Algeria on Tuesday, was an “enemy act,” said Ahmed al-Darrad, the rebels’ interior minister. The child, a daughter, was born in Djanet, a Saharan oasis about 60 kilometres from the Libyan frontier.
Ms. Gadhafi, a lawyer in her mid-30s, was in labour when the family appealed to cross the border, an Algerian source said. That humanitarian consideration was the main reason for them being allowed in, the source added. An Algerian newspaper reported that the exiles, who also included an unknown number of Col. Gadhafi’s grandchildren, waited 12 hours to receive authorization from President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
Meanwhile, in Tripoli, rebel leaders insisted they are slowly restoring order in the war-scarred capital after a week of fighting, including deploying police and collecting garbage. Reporters touring Tripoli still saw chaotic scenes, including motorists stealing fuel from a gas station.
In the capital’s Souk al Jumma neighbourhood, about 200 people pounded on the doors of a bank, demanding that it open. Civil servants said they were told they would receive a 250-dinar (about $200) advance on their salaries for the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
Preparations for the feast days – the Libyans’ first in 42 years without a dictator – will be difficult as the new government struggles with a water shortage in the city of nearly two million people. Running water has been scarce for a week since Gadhafi loyalists attacked crews trying to restart pumping stations for aquifers deep in the desert, rebel official Aref Ali Nayeb said. Bottles of drinking water are reaching most of the residents in aid shipments via Tripoli’s port, distributed through neighbourhood councils and mosques.
On Tuesday, Britain's Foreign Secretary, William Hague, announced “another major step forward in getting necessary assistance to the Libyan people.” The United Nations has agreed to unfreeze about $1.6-billion worth of Libyan currency held in Britain. The newly printed Libyan dinar notes were being held under sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council.
As fighting subsides in Tripoli, rebel fighters were converging on the heavily militarized town of Sirte.
On Monday, NATO hit about three dozen Gadhafi military targets in the Sirte area. NATO insists it remains within the bounds of its original mission of protecting Libyan civilians, but appears to be paving the way for advancing rebel forces with its targeted air strikes.
Rebel commander Ismail Shallouf said patrols have gone 50 kilometres closer to Sirte, and occasionally have exchanged fire with Gadhafi fighters. Ahmed Abu Sweira, standing on a highway overpass that provided some shade for rebels, said they were waiting for reinforcements for the final push.
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